


Odious Lusting After Finance - A Perspective Flip

by Ravenson



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26685217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenson/pseuds/Ravenson
Summary: Lemony Snicket's account of the Baudelaire orphans is known to be inaccurate, but who can correct the record? When a young woman finds evidence that VFD is operating in the open again, she sets out in the hopes of reuniting with her old family. Who she finds instead - an old villain in the familiar guise of Madam Lulu - offers a different perspective on the trials of the Baudelaire orphans and the life of Count Olaf.
Relationships: Count Olaf/Esmé Squalor, Count Olaf/Kit Snicket
Kudos: 6





	1. 0 - When We are Gone, Will it Still Burn On?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A woman investigates a fire and a carnival, finding more than she expected and less than she hoped.

_9_ _Tishr_ _e_ _i_ _5781:_ _a year of the_ _r_ _at_

A two-eyebrowed woman with a surgical mask over her nose and mouth stood in the center of the ashen remains of the factory. She rotated slowly, the hem of her green dress swaying with her movements, surveying the whole of the damage and scribbling an obscure code in a purple notebook with a silver lock on it. Smoke was everywhere, but not from the remnants of this fire – too many still burned across the country. Most of the walls had fallen, leaving only a vague impression of the maze-like facility that had long ago been constructed to save mankind from its own self-reflexive inhumanity. The contents were black piles of ash and a few twisted stumps of metal – most of the assemblies within had been removed long ago when the factory had closed.

When she had written all she could, the woman untied a ribbon keeping the dark hair out of her eyes and returned to the blue car that was waiting for her. She got into the back seat, for at some point in recent months the driver had taped a clear plastic tarp to hang down and separate the front seat passengers from the rear.

“Thank you,” the woman said, “I do promise to leave a five star review – and a generous tip, of course.”

Her driver, a man who had wrapped a red bandana across his face, simply nodded and started the electric engine. He drove down the broad avenue, likely entirely unaware that in his own lifetime it had once been a quiet, country road. His passenger knew. She closed her eyes and tried to picture it: rolling, green hills unaware of the droughts and wildfires to come; a tiny, poorly paved road that snaked its way past the mansions of recluses; hedges and mazes of unusual shapes. A few of the great houses still stood, but most of the construction was new, the sprawl of civilization threatening to consume every empty acre between Siesta Valley and Mt. Diablo in much the way the wildfires threatened to devour the hinterlands.

“Back to where you started?” the driver asked as they approached the Ygnacio Valley on-ramp.

“Yes please,” the woman said, not looking from the window. How strange it was, the way the traffic was almost back to normal, as if the plague was gone, as if the air was not trying to choke every Californian to death.

The driver turned on the radio. “Any requests?” he asked, but the woman simply shook her head. After a few minutes of searching for something that wasn’t playing commercials or songs in Spanish, the driver gave up and let the car be filled with the tune of a love song neither occupant understood. “Was that your property?” he asked. “It didn’t much look like a house.”

The woman laughed. “No,” she said, “it didn’t, and it wasn’t. Not a house, not my property either. It belonged to…” She paused and reached into her small, rectangular purse, producing a worn and folded up piece of paper. Much of it was illegibly waterlogged, but as she unfurled the undamaged section, the driver caught a glimpse of it through his rear view mirror. It seemed to be an old map of the city, which the driver felt couldn’t have been much use in identifying the owner of a property some ways inland. His suspicions were confirmed when the woman looked up with a shrug. “I’m honestly not sure who it belonged to. It was a factory that processed horseradish. My brother ended up working there after his mentor died. I was looking into it for him; he’s been out of state filming nature videos.”

“Mmm,” the driver said noncommittally. “So what happened? Factory owner want the crew to know he was about to have a son?”

“No, it was just arson,” the woman answered. Her eyes scanned over the faded but still legible parts of the map, her lips mouthing what she read. “It doesn’t really matter who started it,” she said, more to herself than anyone. As she folded the paper back up and slipped it into her black bag, she added, “The far more troubling question is why. The factory closed around the turn of the century. It’s been completely abandoned for over a decade now.”

The driver suggested, “Insurance fraud?” but the woman shook her head.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I can’t rule it out because all of my information is out of date, but I suspect that an enemy of the owner wanted to send a message.”

“And what message would that be?” the man asked.

The woman’s eyebrows furrowed. She fixed her gaze firmly on the rear view mirror, her gray-green eyes cold. “One theory I have,” she said, her voice a little uneven, her hand on the seat belt release even though the vehicle was in motion, “is that it might be the answer to an unfathomable question Richard Wright asked in his best known novel.”

“What?” The driver’s own eyes lit up with excitement. “I love Pink Floyd! I didn’t know they wrote books too!”

“No, a different Richard Wright,” the woman said. Her voice was smooth again and she folded her hands in her lap. “He wrote about the plight of African Americans. In his novel, _Native Son_ , he asked-”

The driver rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry, but can we not talk about politics? It’s bad enough having to deal with all these protests. I don’t need to hear about the past’s problems too.”

“Mmm,” the woman said disapprovingly. She pulled a cell phone out of her purse and turned her attention to it, knowing that pointing out that a more universal understanding of the past would be a salve to modern problems would be futile. They took the rest of the ride in silence, the driver finding a station that played inoffensive popular music in English, which he clearly preferred. More familiar love songs, all with the same basic chords, serenaded them on their long trip down multiple highways that accrued a sizable fare. In simpler times, cash would have sufficed, but in the allegedly enlightened modern era people understood that money was a symbol not of value but of debt, and so paid in credit through electronics rather than physically redistributing their bondage. She kept her promise too, five stars for the patience he had shown even though she felt he otherwise deserved no more than four. Making sure she had left nothing in the car seat, the woman exited, but paused just as she was about to close the door.

The radio had switched back to commercials, and a manic voice was urging all listeners to throw caution to the wind and stuff themselves like sardines into some public site. “-shut down for decades for being TOO INTENSE, we’re finally back, folks! The Caligari Carnival is on the road again and we’ll THROW YOU TO THE LIONS if you can’t keep up! Come with us and we just might show you your future! THREE DAYS ONLY – September 25th, 26th, and 27th – but we’re GETTING FREAKY in Dublin all night long, just north up Doughtery Road from 580’s exit 45! We’ll be on the road again after that folks, and with every city in America begging for us, WHO KNOWS if we’ll ever come back?”

The driver looked back at the woman, scoffing at the ad. “They sure picked a hell of a time to try and get people to show up, huh?” he asked. “No one’s going to want to be out with all this smoke. Speaking of…” The driver gave her a pointed glance, and the woman felt her cheeks flush under her mask as she closed the car door at last.

Her destination, an unremarkable house in a pleasant suburb, seemed to flow into its tightly packed neighbors under the smoke. A little sign under the house number read, “Jones”, the name her brother had taken when he had wed. His wife  (and how weird it was to think of her that way – the woman had thought of the pair as her second siblings for years, though as the pair were of no real relation it turned out they’d viewed themselves quite differently)  had taken the name too, as neither had much cared to be  known by their own name. The woman had a shiny brass key to let herself in with and did so in lieu of knocking, for though neither her real nor false name was on the deed, the home belonged to her as much as it did the others.

“Auntie’s here! Auntie’s here!” A pair of young children, seven and four, collided with her before she’d had a chance to kick off her shoes. They were similar in their tan complexion and curly, dark hair, but only the woman’s nephew had inherited the family unibrow. She knelt down to hug them both tightly, ripping off her mask as she descended to show her broad smile. They huddled together for a long moment, and then parted.

“Are your parents back yet?” the woman asked.

Her tiny niece nodded. “They’re making dinner!”

The woman smiled and followed her niblings as they rushed down the entry hall and through the living room, all decorated with simple furniture and  newspaper photos of people dead or missing, to the kitchen.

“-tubing’s alright of course, but I miss film! I miss real theater! It’s not real acting if you can’t play off of anyone – it’s just _reciting_!” A man, perhaps forty, was stirring a large pot of red sauce on a stainless steel oven. He was tall and dark, still handsome despite (or because of?) the two large scars on his face that cut almost from his right eye to just below his lips.

Leaning against an equally stainless fridge was his wife, a woman only a hint older than him whose  dyed blonde locks had  to be straightened every day just in case . “I  _understand_ , Harold,” she said, though of course his name wasn’t Harold any more than hers was Maude. “But it’s just until the vaccine. Things’ll go back to normal then, for both of us. It’s not like it’s a picnic for me either. Half the people I try to interview think that the whole thing’s a fraud and refu-” She stopped, noticing her sister-in-law. All anger disappeared from her face, her  broad smile threatening to wrap around to the back of her head . “Gwen!” she said, and ‘Harold’ stopped what he was doing so that everyone could ecstatically greet each other and exchange hugs. “Where have you been all day? We thought-”

“O. O. burned down,” the woman whose name was not Guinevere said, and all the smiles disappeared again.

“Liam, Emily, why don’t you go play your Nintendo up in your room?” Harold said. The children (who had no idea that everyone in the family, themselves included, went by fake names) started to protest, not wanting to be excluded, but Maude cleared her throat firmly. There was no arguing with their mother – she hadn’t lost an argument since boarding school – so the children left, faces downcast. Harold straightened his fake glasses, stirred the pot again, and said, voice no different from a frightened child’s, “I thought it was all over. I thought they all were dead or in hiding.”

M aude said, “The problem with relying on people being in hiding is that you can’t hide forever.”

Harold shook his head. “We’ve done well enough,” he said.

“We never lit fires,” Maude answered. “Some of those in hiding did. It’s no surprise they’re up to their old tricks again, especially with everything that’s happening. You’d think they’d be ready to operate in broad daylight, considering the president.” Maude was firmly of the opinion that the east coast businessman who currently held office had to be a volunteer of some sort, though as far as Harold and Gwen could tell their organization no longer held any sway east of the Rockies.

“They are operating in broad daylight, or at least under heavy smoke,” Gwen said with a sigh. She pulled out her phone, typed a search query into it, and then held it up. A video version of the radio ad began to play, highlighting a menagerie of caged predators, dangerous rides, and a race of drag queens whose make-up and outfits made them seem almost inhuman – the only “freaks” the twenty-first century would accept being those who were proudly abnormal by choice. “I’m going tonight,” Gwen said when it concluded. “I want to see who’s back on the scene, and it’s our last chance.”

Maude didn’t look up from the screen, even though  all there was to see was a curved arrow pointing back at itself . “Caligari Carnival,” she whispered. “I remember watching that fire…” With a heavy sigh, she turned and retrieved an unopened bottle of wine from  one cabinet  and three glasses from another . “You can’t go. It’s one of their  biggest sites.”

“That’s _why_ I have to go,” Gwen said. “You two should stay this time,” she added, holding up a hand to shush the pair, both of whom had been about to volunteer. “We haven’t done anything like this since before Liam was born.” Taking a deep breath, Gwen added, “I’ll have my cell phone with me the whole time. I’ll call you when I get there and leave it on in my purse, so you can listen in. I’m just going to see if I can recognize anyone and make sure…” Gwen hesitated, both things she wanted to make sure of rising in her throat at once, each so sure of its importance it would not let the other be spoken first. Finally, she managed something that described both in equal measure: “-make sure that my family isn’t there.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t go back,” Harold said, at the same time that Maude said, “I’m sure they’re somewhere safer than that.”

Gwen sighed. “I hope you’re both right,” she said, “but I have to be sure.”

She stayed for dinner, spaghetti with sauce made from ingredients Maude had grown herself,  though halfway through her bowl she excused herself to the bathroom to pluck her brow and change her contacts to electric blue. Then she summoned another driver, st ar ing  ou t the living room window in wait  while her niblings fought virtual mascot battles  on the TV . Harold sat on the sofa beside her, mostly trying to keep his children in line while Maude excused herself to her room. They both knew that Maude was curled up in a ball in the furthest corner of her walk-in closet, trying to cry without the children knowing, and that going to comfort her would just make things worse.

“Are you sure?” Harold asked when they saw red brake lights through the smoke. “The world is quiet in here.”

Gwen nodded. “When I get back, we’ll know what to do. Perhaps it’s time to take another vacation?”

“It might end up a permanent one,” Harold said. The children asked what they meant, but neither adult paid them attention. “Depending on who you see, of course.”

Standing and making sure she had everything in her little black purse, Gwen said, “I’ll call you r burner soon.  Lock the doors and check the laundry once I’m gone.” She bent down to hug Emily and rustle Liam’s hair, still ignoring their confused questions. “If we’re lucky…” She stopped, knowing full well what a stupid conditional that was to rely upon, and simply went to the front door.

Harold followed her, but instead of closing the door behind Gwen like she’d thought he would, he caught her sleeve. She wasn’t sure if it was his hand trembling, or her arm, or perhaps both. “Let’s just go,” he said. “We’ll tell the kids we’re going camping. We can hide in the mountains. Maude will be happy and I’ll-”

Gwen turned back to see Harold was crying too. “If that’s what you have to do,” she said, “if you think there’s any risk of them getting through the tunnel under the washer we blocked, or coming here and lighting fires anyway, pack up and leave now. I don’t want Klaus and Violet to be orphans like we were.”

Harold shook his head. “We have no inheritance,” he said, “and whoever’s running  the place  probably has no idea who any of us are. You’re the one they’d know to look for, not me and Maude.”

“And I don’t look anything like I should,” Gwen said, her blue eyes defiantly shiny. “Goodbye, Harold. I hope to see you soon.”

He nodded, and wiped his eyes clean so the children would not know. “Soon,” he agreed, closing the door. Gwen did not step away until she heard the bolt click, then she hurried to an impatient driver whose car was, appropriately enough, yellow. The driver took her recklessly but wrecklessly to the BART, and from there Gwen rode to  Dublin, arranging another driver to take her the rest of the way.

Almost a quarter after 9 o’clock, Gwen finally arrived. She made the call to Harold’s burner, slipping her phone into a safe pocket on her purse and muting its output. The carnival dominated an empty field that was ordinarily a training area for the armed forces, the glittering neon lights of its Ferris wheel and roller coasters proudly broadcasting even through smoke the social clout the carnival’s proprietors commanded. But almost no one was there, for the smoke itself could be not fully defied. Whether Gwen walked down a line of games like ring toss or past a line of rides, she saw no one outdoors. High-pitched, anxious music followed her everywhere and the smell of imitation butter mixed with the smoke to give everything the scent of burnt popcorn, though what was being sold was clearly well-popped. The food vendors were the only people Gwen saw at all, all of them behind windows they only opened to exchange cash for food, and all of them too young to be who she sought.

Gwen did not know exactly what she was looking for, but she knew it when she saw it. Between a centrifugal ride and a child’s coaster sat a tent that she recognized at once though she had never seen it before – could not have seen it before. Just like her, it represented a new generation, its predecessor destroyed in fire but now flawlessly imitated. Painted on the red canvas was a black insignia made of three hidden letters in the shape of an eye. The tent flaps were open, letting all of the wild smoke in, and Gwen could not see what was inside  beyond the impression of two distant  lights in the far corners . Eyes watering enough to make her regret the shocking blue contacts, she stepped in.

“Hello?” she said, peering forward.

Gwen could just make out a dark mass in front of her, the shape and size of a terrible, bulky cyclops on many ungainly legs. It spoke with a smoky human voice, though the accent belonged to no human tribe. “The visitor will be closing the door behind her, please. Madam Lulu only offers private sessions. She does not like the toms with their peepers.”

As it was only a tent flap that would prove no real impediment, Gwen turned and pulled them back down. She did not ask the person in the tent their real name, not wanting them to know that she knew full well who Madam Lulu represented. She had read _The Carnivorous Carnival_ years ago, though few people had. Perhaps if there had a movie, people would have paid attention or cared about the plight of the Baudelaire orphans, but Snicket’s associates Handler and Sheedey had spent their last years of republishing the tomes on the run, well outside of Hollywood’s sphere of influence. Shortly after only run of _The End_ was distributed to stores, both had allegedly died. Gwen still wasn’t sure: the main source was _The Daily Punctilio’_ _s_ almost excited report to the world about the freak electrical shortage that had destroyed the entirety of Harper-Collins.

“Come closer, please,” Lulu said in the darkness. “The crystal ball, please, wants to see you.”

Gwen inched towards the shape in the smoke. The dim lights provided little context for its shape until she was only a foot away, when it snapped into focus. The legs of the beast were nothing more than table and chair legs, plus Lulu’s own legs in the center. The bulky middle was a rounded table, a crystal ball all but dim in the center. The cyclops’s eye was a  red gem in a turban Lulu wore, hiding her  most of her black hair.  Her face was entirely hidden under a gas mask and she had thick fingers like sausages that she waved vaguely over the crystal ball.

“Yes, please,” Lulu said, looking Gwen over as thoroughly as Gwen had examined her. “You’re a pretty one. The crystal ball, it wonders: are looks deceiving? But pay it no mind, please! It is a saucy troublemaker!” Lulu gave it a playful tap, as if telling it to be silent. The crystal ball did nothing in response. “Welcome to Madam Lulu’s tent of fortunes, please. I can part the veil of the future for you, if you desire.” Her finger waggling became more excited.

Gwen only felt calmer,  disinterested in the overly affected routine . She kept her breathing steady through her own mask. “I’m looking for the owner,” she said. “I’m something of a reporter and was hoping to hear the story of how-”

“Ah ah ah!” Lulu said, wagging a finger. “Please, there can be no, how do you say… prevarications. The crystal ball disapproves, please. If you wish for me to be clear in my answers, you must be clear in your questions.”

Gwen frowned. “I don’t understand. I wasn’t-”

“Please, are you a reporter or no? Many occupations are something of reporters. Even Lulu is something of one: she reports the future, please. But Lulu is not a reporter, not for many years.”

Sighing, Gwen said, “I’m not a reporter.”

Madam Lulu nodded her head. “Honesty, good. Please, ask your question that honesty can be rewarded.”

“I just said I was, because I was hoping to ask about how this carnival got started again.”

Madam Lulu chuckled. “Madam Lulu, she is buying the trademarks and filing the permits. She is hiring the workers and renting the attractions. Sometimes she even is cleaning up all the messes!”

Gwen leaned forward. “So you’re the owner?”

“Indeed! Some say I am even the old Madam Lulu come again, please.” Madam Lulu threw back her head and laughed at this. “This is nonsense. The old Madam Lulu was eaten. Please, do you want the crystal ball to show you?” The woman leaned forward and the crystal ball began to shine, but Gwen shook her head quickly.

“No!” she said.

Madam Lulu curled her hand into a fist and slammed it onto the table. The ball went dark again. “It is good you are not a bloodthirster, please. The crystal  ball  approves:  it likes things quiet . It says to me, please Madam Lulu, ask the  young lady: has she been good to her mother?”

Gwen went pale. “I never knew my mother,” she said firmly, not wanting to know what Madam Lulu would say if she offered the correct passphrase. “You must have me mistaken with somebody else.”

Madam Lulu nodded, saying, “Please, the crystal ball is bad with faces. Make-up is confusion for it. But Lulu is distracting you! The crystal ball says I am being most unhelpful! You wanted to know about the carnival? Ask your questions, please. Three will do, I think.”

Gwen laughed despite herself. “Right,” she said. “Why Caligari Carnival? If you wanted to be a fortuneteller, there’s plenty of other places to go.”

“This is true, but Lulu does not feel safe in them. She has been looking for a safe place for a very long time. Please, when nowhere is safe for you, why not remake the last safe place you knew? Madam Lulu is not selfish, though! Her refuge is for all who need it, even mysterious questioners who come and try to misrepresent themselves to Lulu out of misguided fear.”

Much as Lulu’s showmanship had calmed Gwen, her reassurances only made her more nervous. Gwen asked, “ So if someone came here to make the world less safe… you wouldn’t help them?”

“Lulu sees no need to volunteer for destruction,” the fortune teller said. “She’s lived that life long enough. Please, the crystal ball says that the futures it shows are for second chances. The carnival only mattered to such malingerers when it contained information, but Lulu keeps no secrets of use. Look under the table, please? Does the orphan woman see a box of secret knowledge? A trapdoor to a penthouse apartment?”

Gwen could not see a box, but in the low light she was unsure about the door. She bent down, her fingers reaching out for the floor. She felt only bare dirt, even when she tried to find some secret hinge. “I suppose not,” she conceded as she straightened. “ But then why are you open on a night like tonight? On military property?”

“Madam Lulu has just enough connections to make some things possible, please – and inheritance to spare. She held carnival here first to water test, please. If carnival does not burn down, then she has nothing to fear!”

“So then who are you really?” Gwen asked, the extra question slipping from her lips before she could stop it.

The other woman said, “Madam Lulu thinks she could ask the same. She thinks you will not know  her name at all,  please. Further, she suspects she would know yours if you gave it truly, but the crystal ball has ordered me not to ask, please. It says it would make me a poor host.”

“If I won’t know your name, what’s the harm in telling me? Wouldn’t it be on the licensing you mentioned?”

“Yes, Lulu is thinking it would be, if Madam Lulu was a fool. But she isn’t, as sure as her name isn’t Patience Dinkyrn, whatever the paperwork says.”

Gwen shut her eyes for half a second,  focusing on her special talent,  and then said, “I bet Dink y rn has a ‘y’ in it.”

Madam Lulu didn’t respond at first, then shrugged. “What of it, please? Visitor knows how to spell her fake name?”

“I don’t,” Gwen said truthfully. “Not sure where the ‘y’ goes. But it’s there all the same, because it belongs in your real name, which is Kennedy. Right, Miss Pitcairn?”

Again Madam Lulu began to laugh uncontrollably. She threw her head back so hard that she rocked in her seat, and one of her thick hands knocked the crystal ball off of its round pedestal. It bounced on the ground instead of shattering, but the fortune teller didn’t care. Gwen had just decided it was time to leave when the other woman recovered, clutching her chest and wheezing through her mask.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice much deeper. “I just…” She started to laugh again, though her lungs had little to work with and she soon stopped. “I just thought you were Sunny Baudelaire. But you aren’t, are you? Not _quite_.”

Gwen shook her head, backing up. “No,” she said. “I told you: you have me mistake-”

“It’s alright, Beatrice,” Kennedy said, reaching up and beginning to undo the turban. “We need have no secrets here. My days of villainy are behind me. You have nothing to fear here.” The turban fell away, and next Kennedy removed her mask, revealing two surprises at once: she was incredibly wrinkled (Beatrice suspected her dark hair must have been dyed), and her face was not female but male. She wore lipstick and gaudy blue eye shadow all the same and Beatrice was too well-mannered to stop thinking of her as a woman just because of the likely contents of her underwear or the shape of her face and hands, but she was too aware of VFD’s history to feel safe in the company of a former villain who blurred gender lines.

Beatrice pulled her water-damaged map out of her purse, pointing to the streets of Potrero Hill. Kennedy could just barely see a familiar hand’s scrawl written on top of the map. “If I have nothing to fear, why are you listed in this coded portfolio as one of Olaf’s associates?”

K ennedy returned her mask to its place before she answered, not wanting to breathe the smoke any longer than necessary. “You remind me of my old employer,” she said.

“Count Olaf?” Beatrice asked, her hands reaching behind her for a hint of the tent flaps. After what felt like far too many steps back, she found them.

Nodding, Kennedy said, “I can’t say I’m proud of my past. I have even less of an excuse than so many of those your uncle wrote about: my parents survived my childhood, and if I had wanted an ill-gotten fortune so badly I could simply have been the son they wanted  instead of committing all of those terrible crimes .  But I’ve suffered too. ”  She leaned back in her seat and reached for its sides – only then did Beatrice notice the wheels. “I haven’t been able to walk in nearly two and a half decades,” she said, working her way slowly around the table to the crystal ball. “The fire at the hospital didn’t kill me, but it did irreparable damage all the same.”

Kennedy leaned over the side of her chair awkwardly, retrieving her prop. “And of course, then came your uncle’s defamation.” She laughed bitterly, waving her other hand up and down while gesturing at herself. “Truly, I am a dumb beast, fit for nothing but carrying infant orphans around in my mouth.”

Beatrice looked down at the ground. “All the Baudelaires told me that he got a lot of details wrong.”

For the third and final time that night, Kennedy threw back her head as she cackled. “A lot? It’s a miracle there’s any truth in those stories at all! Your uncle wrote those books so quickly that he finished them before he began – and I’m not the only one he misrepresented. There isn’t a single person in those books he captured accurately, and often because of deliberate lies!”

F eeling her face flush again, Beatrice said, “I know my uncle wasn’t a very good person. He confessed to murder a few years ago, you know. A murder he committed when he was barely thirteen! If you just want to rant to me about how wicked he was, you don’t need to bother. One of the reasons I came here was to make sure he wasn’t starting all of this up again.”

“That’s very noble of you,” Kennedy said, “to come into the lion’s den to protect the world from your legacy.”

“Thank you,” Beatrice said, for Kennedy’s tone convinced her of the false Lulu’s sincerity.

“May I ask why else you came?” Kennedy asked. “I’m happy to provide what you need.” Not wanting to say the other main reason, Beatrice explained the fire on Lousy Lane, but Kennedy knew nothing of it. “It has been a bad year and that building’s been empty a long time. Are you sure it wasn’t insurance fraud?”

Beatrice snapped, “Of course it wasn’t!”, her nostrils flaring and eyes so wide they seemed ready to pop out of her skull. “It never is with VFD! The organization’s been in chaos for years but it keeps lighting fires! I half-suspect the gender reveal party was sabotaged by fire starters!”

Kennedy held up her arms in surrender. “All right,” she said. “I’m sure you know better than I do. But I promise, I did not light that fire.” There was an awkward pause, and then Kennedy hazarded, “Is there anything else I can reassure you about?”

Beatrice’s face fell. “I came to find them too, just in case they were alive but in danger. But they aren’t here. You said earlier that  you  _thought_ I was Sunny …”

The wheelchair scooted across the uneven ground until it was even with Beatrice, and Kennedy put a surprisingly gentle hand on her arm. “No. They’re not here,” she said. “I’m sorry, honey.”

Beatrice nodded, but she started to sob, even though it was stupid to. It was stupid to have hoped at all, to think she could ever get lucky when her life was just the latest chapter in a long series of unfortunate events-

“Shhh!” Beatrice stopped. She hadn’t even realized she’d started speaking at all. She opened her eyes, blinking repeatedly to clear them. Kennedy had embraced her from the side, though she’d contorted in her chair so that both hands were patting her back gently. “Don’t say such things, dear. You have had good luck, coming here tonight.”

Beatrice gulped. “I have?”

“I have a long story to tell you,” Kennedy said, nodding toward the tent flap. “I can’t say it’ll be any less unbiased than your uncle’s, but I think when I’m done that your life will make more sense, and you’ll feel safer.”

The younger woman frowned. “The Baudelaires already told me about what happened to them,” she said.

“That’s part of the story,” Kennedy admitted, “but this is a much longer story. The Baudelaire story starts just a few months after you were conceived, but the story I want to tell you starts more than sixty years ago.”

“Your story?” Beatrice asked.

Kennedy tilted her head in a way that suggested without the gas mask she would be giving Beatrice quite the condescending look. “No, honey. This is Count Olaf’s story. It’s the story of how he met your mother and uncles, and why he wanted to steal fortunes so badly, and how he  recruited me, Fernald, Boris and all us other  actors who gave up morality in the face of adversity. It's the story of the women he loved and the son he never knew and the coded map he created that was never quite complete because of said. It’s the story of  this very carnival’s forbidden but perennial secrets, crimes that were distorted by the  _Punctilio_ and ancient grudges that fractured a noble society. And yes, in a roundabout way, it is the story of the Baudelaire orphans all over again, although certainly your uncle Lemony reported things accurately enough that I’ll mostly fill in the gaps he couldn’t know. I was there for most of it, after all, and Esmé  Squalor  told me  about everything I missed shortly before she died, and when I reconciled with my parents they told me the very last details, because Lemony defamed them too in a way.” The older woman hesitated. “And if I tell you all of that, so truthful that your little coded map won’t have any choice but to back it all up, and everything that happened to me after the hospital… Will you catch me up on your own past?” She sighed, turning to the side and staring off at something no one could see. “Everyone who could relate to my experiences is long dead now, I’m afraid. It’s left me lonely.”

Beatrice frowned. “We’ll see,” she said at last. “It will depend on…” She hesitated, trying to find a polite way to say it.

“On whether or not you feel like running away as fast as you can and calling the police to let them know a notorious criminal is on the loose?” Kennedy simply nodded when Beatrice’s mouth hung open in the awkwardness of the truth. “That’s more than fair, honey. I keep telling you: you have nothing to fear. I was fond of both of your parents, you know. I wouldn’t hurt their daughter, not for all the fortunes on the west coast.”

Beatrice took several deep breaths, thinking of the phone in her purse, still listening in. She wondered briefly what ‘Harold’ and ‘Maude’ would be thinking of what happened. Had they already fled town as soon as they heard her real name? Were they on the way to help her, despite the risk to their children? “I’ll listen to your story,” she said at last, “but not here. Let’s meet  when the smoke clears  at a public  park . Somewhere visible, where I can be watched.”

“Wonderful!” Kennedy said, her voice almost cracking in relief.

The rest of the conversation proceeded apace, with Kennedy supplying a phone number to reach her  once the smoke was gone . Beatrice  left the carnival before  unmut ing her phone  and c hecking in with ‘Maude’ (her husband had fallen asleep), who was shaky but relieved to hear that Beatrice was alright . The  couple had not left  home , but Beatrice did not return to them, instead choosing a hotel in case she was pursued by any of Kennedy’s associates.

The next morning, when she woke up alive, she concluded  that she probably hadn’t been followed .  The smoke had cleared, so Beatrice made a quick pair of calls: one to home and one to Kennedy, then started her journey to Golden Gate Park. Kennedy had already arrived when Beatrice got there ,  face bare but for a mask and the rest of her clad in an attractive pink pantsuit, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries, the old woman began her story… 


	2. 1.1 - A Fairy Tale Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A count and countess celebrate their good fortune. An unwanted guest laments his own.

_27 Tishrei 5719: a year of the dog_

My friend Olaf, for as ashamed as I am now of our deeds together I will never deny that we were friends, was born on the family manor in the bustling heart of the city. The house had belonged to the family for nearly a century at that point, and as they had been wealthy ever since the gold rush, it was one of the finest homes in the land. The exterior was still a soft baby blue trimmed with black, the gardens were still a cornucopia of exotic plants, and the interior was kept pristine by volunteer maids who hoped to someday earn a promotion to more exciting postings. Everything was in good repair and well-furnished, made only by the most fashionable and exclusive designers and purveyors. The kitchen appliances were never more than six months old before being replaced by a better model; the radio, record player, and color television all sat in a custom cabinet made of green wood that dominated the den; and the dining room had enough porcelain you could eat off of a different plate every day of your life and still not get through it all. The guest bedrooms were each themed around a different color: green, gold, crimson, blue, and white. The family library had started at the top of the tower but had overflowed to the point that nearly every room had a full shelf of books. No one wanted for anything so long as they were in the home: not family, not guests, not even the servant volunteers.

While my story will go back no further than Olaf could recollect to me, there is one single story I will tell of his life that even he himself did not remember. Throughout his apprenticeship he heard details of this event from those in attendance, though he did not piece together the whole story until he was a young man. Nonetheless, as this event portended a great many things, even the Baudelaire fire, it seems only for the best to start with it. A few days after Olaf’s birth, once the Countess had recovered from the ordeal of childbirth, the manor gates were opened to every volunteer who had time to attend. In those more peaceful days, almost all of them did, and so home and gardens were packed full to bursting with the greatest figures of the age: Armer and Oliveira, Togasaki and Wood, James and Bevans, Adams and Whalen. But you wouldn’t know who those people are, would you? They were peripheral volunteers at the best of times, each in theory the first generation of their family to participate. As it turned out, they would also be the last.

These are names that belong to more familiar people, and they were in attendance too: Quagmire (but not the now-deceased Dylan Quagmire, as he was only three months old), Julienne (but not Geraldine, as she was some years yet from birth), and Montgomery (Monty, though at only eight he was of course there with his parents). The Kornbluths had come, the Gifford siblings, and even the Anwhistles. The Widdershins and Denouements had been invited but could not come, the Verhoogans would have come if they’d gotten their invitation in time, and the Calibans had shown up without being invited because they didn’t need an invitation. I’m sure there were many others too, perhaps the Marksons or the Poes or even the MacNicols (but not the Spats’s, they hadn’t been inducted yet), but I only know for certain a few other guests: The Duchess Schiezka happened to be visiting the Snicket siblings, so they were there as well – but she was not the party’s biggest guest. In those days, the Baudelaires were seen as cream of the crop, the names Fernald and Jacquelyn synonymous with truth, faithfulness, and hard work, just as the family motto said Baudelaires should be. They had served alongside every volunteer, a difficult feat in that era, and had earned the adoration of all, especially with Jacquelyn just starting to show.

But of course the family was the real stars of the party. At least a dozen cigars were offered up to the count in congratulation, and as the evening wore on a thick haze of tobacco had spread throughout the den. The countess had set a comfortable couch up in Olaf’s nursery and spent most of the party holding Olaf or watching him sleep in his cradle, a parade of well-wishers slowly working their way through the room to see the baby. Everyone shook one another’s hands, the count received more slaps on the back than he ever had in his life, and everyone embraced the countess. At least once every fifteen minutes or so, someone at the punch bowl would shout, “To Olaf!” and everyone would toast his health and take a long drink, because excepting sage sodas for expectant mothers and children, every beverage was quite alcoholic. They did this in spite of there being a toast planned to close the evening, for there were drinks enough to go around.

When the sun was setting and the countess insistent that things needed to settle down for Olaf to get to sleep, the revelers all trooped into the garden for that final toast. Many had left already, to get a quick dinner before attending many of the other parties that were hosted every weekend in that golden age, but enough people remained that the distribution of champagne glasses was a major undertaking. Fernald, who had the honor of leading the toast to the lucky family, gave a long and fond speech expressing his love for the count and countess, relating many tales of their bravery. Whatever these tales were, they died long ago: Olaf never learned them. The witnesses quite forgot the contents of the speech in light of its interruption, save five syllables uttered just as a new guest stepped onto the balcony.

“To a long and hap-” Fernald said, and then he became as pale as a ghost, his mouth hanging open in shock. His champagne glass shook in his raised hand, spilling its contents onto him. His wife nearly dropped her own soda bottle as she instinctively clutched at her stomach. They both stepped away from the back door, Fernald and the count spreading their arms out to block the interloper’s path to their wives, little Olaf, and the unborn child who would be your namesake.

The other guests reacted in much their own way, although gasps of shock were among the most common response. Hannah Montgomery said, “I thought he was dead!” while her husband scooped Monty into his arms – the pair of them ducked around the side gate, as did several other guests who had no intention of being around the newcomer. I expect the more physically-inclined guests – Solitude if she was there, both the Anwhistles, and the Duchess Schiezka – would have stepped forward as well, to be ready to protect the other guests.

If a neighbor had been watching the party from their window, they might have thought everyone to be overreacting. The newcomer was not a physically imposing man, tall but thin. He wore an immaculate blue suit with golden cuff links and narrow black-rimmed glasses. Unlike many members of his family, he had two eyebrows. Left unchecked, they were bushy and wild, but the man’s peculiar vanity drove him to pluck them into nearly invisible lines. It was by this that they knew him, for he had not been seen in many years.

“What are you doing here?” the count demanded.

“If you don’t leave, we’ll call the police!” the countess added, clutching Olaf tightly in her arms.

The unwanted guest shook his head. “I am here to offer a toast to my great nephew,” he said.

“You’re not his great uncle,” the countess said firmly. “You’re his third cousin twice removed, and if I could make my children any less related to you I would.”

“Pfft!” the man said, spit flying from his shaking lips. “You don’t seem to have any trouble inviting the rest of my family.” He pointed to two almost identical women in the crowd. “Or at least some of them.” To the woman with both two eyebrows and two ears, he asked, “Are you Esther or Fiona?” In answer, Mrs. Caliban poured her drink out onto the grass and strode out to the side gate as well. The man grimaced after her as she went. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Deborah, my darling daughter! It has been too long!”

Mrs. Anwhistle did not respond except to grind her teeth. Her aunt and uncle stepped forward. “It’s time for you to leave,” her aunt said.

“I have business to discuss with you, Avis. You and Bertrand both.”

“Not here, not now.” Bertrand was almost identical to his brother, though he did not trim his eyebrows, and Avis had a very similar build but with slightly more feminine proportions. “Not ever.”

The interloper walked to the stairs at the edge of the balcony, staring down at his estranged family. “I have a right to my inheritance,” he said. “A family fortune is traditionally split three ways among triplets, after all.”

“Mother and Father wrote you out of the will for a reason, and we’re quite content to consider ourselves twins now. You’re no brother of ours.” Bertrand led the conversation while Avis stepped over to one of the folding tables placed for the party to begin digging through her purse. “You couldn’t even be a father to your children.”

The unwanted brother sneered. “I left them in the care-”

It was his turn to be interrupted, for Avis had found what she was looking for: a shining six-shooter pistol. She returned to her brother and niece, holding it up casually, the barrel of the gun pointed at her brother’s chest. “You left them in the care of a monster,” she said, her free hand squeezing Deborah Anwhistle’s. “It took me almost a decade to get custody of them. You can leave in a much shorter time, I’m sure.”

“I needed a new identity-”

Avis laughed. “By all means, use it.”

“-my research into the occult had made it quite clear-”

“The only thing occult research can bring about,” Deborah said firmly, “is the knowledge that magic isn’t real.”

“-it was the only way to seek my fortune-”

“Then you certainly shouldn’t need ours,” Bertrand said. He rolled up his sleeves and he and Avis stepped forward together.

Their brother took a step back. “I discovered secrets our organization can use to bring about a new era!” he said, eyes wide and spittle flying. “The things my associates and I learned about the human mind could revolutionize volunteering! Our research into twins and triplets alone-”

“Count Olaf! Countess Ophelia!” Their volunteer maid for the weekend, Monday, stuck her head out of one of the kitchen windows. “I’ve called the police! They’ll be here in minutes!”

The disgrace to the family glared at Monday, then spat in the countess’s direction and broke into a run for the fence. He hopped it and was gone, the only hint as to his path coming a few minutes later when the woman who lived five houses down started screaming about a strange man in her garden. When the police arrived, he was long gone, and everyone hoped he would stay that way, or at least disappear for another couple of decades. Sadly, while he never darkened the count’s doorstep again, Chas Snicket’s influence would haunt everyone at that party until their dying days.

* * *

Beatrice raised one half of her artificially divided unibow. “Another evil family member of mine?” she asked. “Then I suppose all of my ancestors were a blight upon the count’s family in your estimation? And we caused all the schisms of VFD too?”

“No,” Kennedy said firmly. “The count and countess loved Avis and Bertrand dearly, and their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had all been friends or closely enough related to be family. Deborah and Fiona, and Esther too although she had been unable to find a sitter, had been welcome to the party as well, and no one held their deplorable father against them. While Charles was the first volunteer to kill another, the schism he instigated was about far more than his denied inheritance or his unspeakable betrayal. The volunteer fire department was rotting from within, and many more than he took action to divide it further, Count Olaf among them. This is a story of his crimes first and foremost, but at this point he was only a baby.” Kennedy took a drink from a water bottle at her side. “Next, why don’t I tell you about the first bad thing he did, so you understand that this isn’t a whitewashing of his behavior?”

Nodding, Beatrice said, “Yes, I suppose that would be a good topic to move to,” and she folded her hands in front of her, shifting uncomfortably on the picnic table they shared. “What did he do?”

“What do you think he did?” Kennedy asked. “He started fires.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should be noted that this story will be told in two semi-alternating threads. We will be skipping a good ways ahead next time, to the start of the events of ASOUE, for chapter 2. Chapter 3 will return to Olaf's childhood, and we shall continue skipping back and forth in that fashion, more or less.


	3. 1.2 - Un Troupeau de Demons Vicieux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A theatrical troupe attempts to get its drink on. News of fire and death arrive.

_13 Tishrei 5756: a year of the boar_  
  
Olaf had only been gone for two days, so none of us thought anything of his absence. As we often did on Friday nights, the troupe gathered at the Lucky 13, the latest bar operating out of an old volunteer site. Most people had no idea of its history, only a few eagle-eyed people catching the little imprint at the bottom of the building’s facade with VFD’s own insignia and the year “5667”. Olaf assured us that the proprietors were not part of the inner circle proper, but I always thought it suspicious the way the owner insisted everyone call him “Hans” when it wasn’t his name, and the bartender was surely joking when she said her name was “Blades”. Perhaps whatever training they received was simply a pale shadow of the lessons the organization would normally teach.  
  
We’d gathered out on the patio despite the cool air. As regular patrons, or perhaps simply intimidating ones, no one complained when we took two tables and tilted them together to give ourselves more room. When Olaf was around, we all drank from the same bottle, but as our tastes were different when we did pay for ourselves everyone got their own drinks. Marian preferred whiskey neat while her sister Goldie only paid for white wine. That night John sat between them, a two-fisted drinker with different lagers in each hand. Fernald always thought himself more dashing than he really was and preferred a martini. On my other side was Boris, who drank red wine just like Olaf did, and in nearly the same quantities. I think that night I had a fuzzy navel, or perhaps five or six.  
  
It must have been around ten when we heard his car. There was no mistaking that dying Oldsmobile’s engine. How he kept it running all those years I’ll never understand; it broke down at every inopportune moment. Most people might have parked in the immediately adjacent parking lot, but just around the block was one of the official fire stations, and his friends there let him do as he please. Everyone hurriedly finished their drinks and Fernald, ever obsequious, rushed off to order several bottles of wine.  
  
He came back out onto the patio with Olaf, who was clearly in a terrible mood. His eyebrow was as furrowed as a stormy sea and his usual bright eyes were as dark as midnight. He carried two of the four bottles Fernald had bought, one empty, the other being emptied. Fernald was awkwardly holding the other two bottles close to his chest, his hooks not reliable enough to hold the bottles by the neck for the whole walk. Olaf staggered over to us, sitting where Fernald had, leaving his devoted friend no choice but to sit at the far end of the other table.  
  
“Where have you been, boss?” he asked. “Another mission?”  
  
Olaf shook his head. “I’ve just been lying low,” he lied. It was obvious to all of us, but we knew better than to ask questions. He looked around the table, I thought defying one of us to question him, but none of us wanted to do that. Marian was working on keeping her face neutral; the pale-faced woman had a tendency to make a condescending pouting expression when she felt sympathy for anyone. “Where are the cups?” Olaf demanded suddenly. “How are we supposed to drink without wine glasses!”  
  
“Sorry boss!” Fernald said, standing up, but Olaf groaned.  
  
“Sit!” he said, “you’ll only drop everything. John, you go get some wine glasses.” Olaf snapped his fingers impatiently while the bald man stood up and shuffled off.  
  
Boris leaned forward, scratching the underside of one his warts. “Are you alright, cousin?” he asked. “Has something happened?”  
  
Olaf didn’t answer, in part because he didn’t want to and in part because he had turned back to John, who had come outside empty-handed.  
  
“Boss!” he said. “She’s h-”  
  
A bizarrely manicured hand appeared on John’s shoulder, each nail painted gray with a little “RIP” added on in black, and the bald man shuddered and stepped aside. There was no mistaking Esmé Salinger, even when her hair was dyed orange and she was wearing a dress with a human skeleton painted onto it. It was always tragic when holidays became fashionable, as Esmé threw herself into the occasion with the same enthusiasm she showed for every trend. At first, I didn’t understand why Esmé’s arrival was a matter of concern. Then I saw exactly how thin her lips had become, as if she had eaten an entire bushel of lemons.  
  
“Olaf, I will never forgive you!” she snapped. “How dare you use me like that?”  
  
This seemed to surprise Olaf too. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, his question book-ended by long drinks from his bottle.  
  
“You come crawling out of my elevator shaft for your escape plan, ‘accidentally’ tossing the rope down to the bottom once you get there, and you tell me that the Baudelaires had you over for tea?”  
  
“It was an accident, and I didn’t say tea. They were just-”  
  
Esmé stepped forward, so that no one could overhear. “They were just burning to crisps,” she said, “and you didn’t even have the decency to tell me so that I could celebrate. You didn’t even steal the sugar bowl back for me and now it’s missing again. I can’t think of anything that could possibly be more out than that, darling.”  
  
Olaf shook his head, but Goldie asked, “Is that why you were out of town, boss? On the lam again?”  
  
He glared at her. Esmé smiled. “Yes, Olaf,” she said. “Why were you out of town?”  
  
The count glared. “I was busy,” he said. “So busy that I didn’t even hear the news.” He reached into his faded coat pocket, producing his coded map of the city. “If I had killed them,” he said, “wouldn’t I have at least made a note?”  
  
Esmé snatched the map from his hands and began to unfold it. She could read it, as could Boris and Fernald, but the rest of us had not been taught the code Olaf used. Her fingers traced the line of roads until she reached the neighborhood where the Baudelaire mansion had stood, two tiny collections of nonsense characters written faintly nearby with various lines drawn across the city to connect them to their family members and associates. Esmé frowned. “You didn’t write down their deaths,” she said, her face switching back and forth from anger and confusion several times. “But darling, if you didn’t kill them – and I certainly couldn’t have killed them thanks to your clumsiness – then who did?”  
  
“Does it matter?” Olaf asked, snatching the map back. He pulled his four-color pen from his jacket as well and began scribbling new notes on the well-folded pages. Red only meant one thing so far as I knew: death. “We’ve outlived them. Isn’t that enough?” He glared at John. “Go get those cups- wait, no.” He dug through his pockets, found nothing, and looked to Esmé hopefully. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help us make a toast?” he asked.  
  
The city’s sixth-most important financial advisor rolled her eyes and handed a platinum credit card to John. “Only strawberry-flavored liquors are in right now,” she said, “so if you order anything else with my money I’ll get my tweezers and make your body as bald as your head.”  
  
John just laughed as he hurried off to get the drinks. Esmé took me by the shoulder and shoved me aside so that she could sit next to her… Well, the term. “It’s complicated.” wouldn’t be popular to describe relationships for some time, but I think with hindsight it’s a much better descriptor for them than anything else. She looked down at the map as Olaf was finishing with it, and asked, “Shouldn’t you put their brats down as well? They’ve been staying with the executor, and he’s a blithering idiot, so it’s only a matter of time before they get inducted.”  
  
“True,” Olaf said, adding three new lines to the map. He did this very quickly, not knowing their names yet or anything about them other than their parentage. He frowned. “Tragic, really. Beatrice almost kept her children safe. Almost.” He turned to Esmé. “Do you know who they’ll be apprenticed to?”  
  
She shrugged. “How could I? Maybe good old Citrus is still active.” We never referred to your uncle by his name, as none of us were fond of him. “He must be salivating if he is. I’m sure he’d have kept plenty of Beatrice’s old outfits from school and the theater – he could take the elder daughter and make her into the perfect replacement.”  
  
“What better way to honor the memory of the one who got away than a little wife husbandry with her daughter?” Boris asked, and we all laughed except Olaf, who was still staring at the map, tracing the lines he’d drawn to connect the various agents and volunteers.  
  
“He won’t be their first choice,” he said, half-whispering. “Probably not the twins either. We did a good job making sure of that. So who would they pick? Who?” He traced the lines back and forth, focused mostly on the outer edges of the map where most of the notes were placed.  
  
Esmé shook her head. “You’d have to ask Arthur Poe, and good luck with that. You’re as likely to get TB from him as the time of day.”  
  
Boris laughed. “Crazy how the son of such an esteemed volunteer could be such a disappointment,” he said.  
  
“He’s still useful!” Fernald cut in. “He’d be long dead by now if he weren’t.”  
  
Olaf glared up from the map at the hook-handed man, ready to contradict him somehow, but that’s when John came back with the booze and we were all well-distracted from there. Boris poured out the eight shots of strawberry-flavored vodka and we raised them in a happy circle. “To outliving those who got in our way!” Olaf said, and we let out a happy cheer, spent the next thirty seconds or so making sure we clinked glasses with everyone, and drank. Then we drank two more shots each in rapid succession, the second toast more of the same and the third noticeably slurred.  
  
Esmé started dancing, and Olaf joined her, the two grinding obscenely in the darkness of early morning. Boris and Marian did a stumbling waltz while Goldie and I tangoed. Fernald and John sat together, drinking and occasionally glaring at Esmé and Olaf, respectively. We finished the awful vodka, at which point Esmé was tipsy enough to declare that anything alcoholic was in and I hurried to run up a better tab.  
  
When I came back, she and Olaf were sitting together at the table, facing away from it and leaning against each other. “You didn’t steal the sugar bowl while you were there, did you darling?” she asked. “You wouldn’t have kept it from me?”  
  
“Course not,” Olaf promised, waving me forward hurriedly so he could have another drink. I poured for everyone, getting most of the bourbon on the table, as they spoke. “I hate sugar. Tea should be as bitter as… as a worm?” He frowned. “No, that’s not right.”  
  
Esmé shook her head. “Of course it’s not right,” she said. “Saccharine is in, and so are complete tea sets. If anyone wanted me to host a social function I’d be a complete mockery. I don’t think I could show my face in public again if they knew I didn’t have a sugar bowl.” She took her cup from me, her hands shaking in so much rage that it was empty before she had a chance to take a single sip. “I couldn’t find a hint of it in the ashes,” she said, “and I looked very thoroughly.”  
  
“It might have been destroyed?” I suggested.  
  
“My tea set,” Esmé said, sitting straight up as if her offense had cured her drunkenness, “was created custom. Zirconium diboride and hafnium diboride in alternating layers, kept in a shell of carborundum that was 20% of each piece’s volume.” Having left the rehearsed part of her speech, she began to stumble over her words again. “You could rocket the whole thing into fire with a space and it wouldn’t melt.” She tried again: “You could melt the whole thing into space with a rocket and it wouldn’t fire.” Then she gave up and laughed.  
  
Fernald asked, “Is it safe to serve tea in that?” but Esmé didn’t hear.  
  
Olaf pulled out his map again, looking over it. “I’m not even sure who’s left to steal it,” he said. “I would have noticed if Jacquelyn was visiting. Unless…” I followed his gaze to the freshly written information on the Baudelaire orphans. “They were at the beach!” he said. “They might have been having a picnic or whatever insipid things children get up to these days!”  
  
We all leaned in again, alcohol forgotten. Olaf and Esmé turned back around to face the table, Esmé nearly bouncing with anticipation.  
  
“If they had it during the fire,” said Marian, “then they probably still have it, as a keepsake.”  
  
“They would have lost nearly everything,” her sister agreed.  
  
Olaf nodded. “Then whichever volunteer inducts them gets the sugar bowl!” he said. “Which means-”  
  
“Which means I have to adopt them myself!” Esmé declared. Then she hesitated. “Only… orphans aren’t in.” She turned to Olaf. “Darling,” she said, reaching for the buttons of his dingy shirt and starting to undo them. “You’ll help me, won’t you?” She was running her fingers over his chest, which was uncomfortable for all of us. “Those brats can’t be allowed to finish their mother’s work…”  
  
The count took Esmé’s hand and guided it away from him, back to the table. “You want me to try and adopt Beatrice’s children? Beatrice’s?”  
  
Esmé put on her most winning smile. “It’s not like you’d really have to raise them,” she said. “I’m sure you could get your own vengeance too. Beat them, torture them, kill them. It doesn’t really matter. You’ve gotten away with worse!”  
  
“I’d be putting a target on my back!” Olaf protested. “Every ‘noble’ volunteer in the hemisphere would drop what they were doing to rescue their precious Baudelaires!”  
  
“And when the volunteer who adopts them gets the sugar bowl and looks in its secret compartment, they’ll have more than enough evidence to put all of us in jail,” Esmé said.  
  
Olaf shrugged. “Like you said: I’ve gotten away with worse.”  
  
Esmé went quiet, looking around at each of us in turn to intercede for her. Even John had nothing to say. Surprisingly, Fernald did ask, “But what about us, boss? Won’t we go to jail too?”  
  
The count looked around the table at all of us, slightly swayed but unwilling to admit it.  
  
“One of the reasons we’ve kept out of prison as long as we have,” Boris said, following Fernald’s arguments, “are our friends in high places. But they’ve only had to put out fires for us two or three at a time, and then we fade from the public eye again. If they had to cover for all of us at once, for crimes stretching back decades, would they even bother?”  
  
Olaf’s expression became almost as dark as it had when he’d arrived. It was a bad idea to talk about the high court unprompted, at least most of the time. “No,” he said, “they wouldn’t.” He looked at the map again, tracing a line from Bertrand and Beatrice to somewhere else on his coded map. “There’s the matter of their fortune too, I suppose,” he said, clearly trying to convince himself. “And it’s been a long time since any volunteers took care of the home.” Smiling, Olaf said, “Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll take them in, keep them working night and day, bleed their accounts dry with our expenses, and get the sugar bowl along the way.” He chuckled. “But we’ll all have to work hard to keep the house safe. Like I said: every volunteer will step in to help these children.”  
  
Looking down at the map, Esmé said, “It’s not like there are that many left. Hold out for six months and you’ll probably eliminate most of the ones still active. And I’ll do what I can with my own clients to make sure none of them can do much against you. It’ll be no trouble at all once I have my sugar bowl back.”  
  
“But how will you adopt them?” Goldie asked.  
  
Olaf grinned at us, his eyes shining with malice. “I’ll just have to make a visit to Mr. Poe.” He stood up. “To the bank!”  
  
“Darling, it’s midnight,” Esmé reminded him. “Those lazy bankers closed up hours ago.”  
  
Olaf shrugged. “To a better bar!” he said, refusing to sit back down even as Esmé pulled at his arm, “and then tomorrow: the bank!”  
  
Groaning, we staggered after him.  
  
* * *  
  
“Of course,” Kennedy said after pausing for another drink, “whatever else happened that night, I couldn’t tell you. Most of us had already blacked out, and the rest followed shortly after. The next morning, once our own voices didn’t aggravate our headaches, Olaf placed a call, but as it was Saturday Mr. Poe wasn’t available. The secretary was more than happy to arrange an appointment first thing Monday morning, though.”  
  
Beatrice nodded. “So what did happen to the sugar bowl then? How did it end up in the Mortmain Mountains? Surely whoever burned the house down would have been the first on the scene to steal it, but they wouldn’t have been welcome at the valley headquarters, would they?”  
  
“They would have been quite welcome, actually,” Kennedy said, “but the person who left the mansion with the sugar bowl didn’t go to the mountains. After some awkward detours, they were forced to leave the country entirely, sugar bowl in tow.”  
  
“But then how did it end up in the mountains?” Beatrice asked, leaning forward.  
  
But Kennedy only smiled and continued her story.


	4. 1.3 - A Thousand Winds that Blow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olaf plays Detective Dupin for the first time and becomes a firebug.

_Tisha B'_ _Av 572_ _2_ _: a year of the_ _tiger_

For the first five years of his life, Olaf almost never left the family estate. For a very young child, the tower and the gardens and the colorful maze of guest rooms proved more than enough entertainment. The count and countess were busy with many social functions and their work with optometry and rocketry, but both always found time to play board games with Olaf or play records or even read him their favorite poetry. They read him Eliot and Carroll, Baudelaire and Villon, Homer and Virgil, even Krylov and Pushkin despite the contemporary contempt for such writers. Olaf’s youth made it hard for him to understand everything, but both of his parents had clear, melodious voices even in casual conversation. When trying to impress, their recitals and readings bordered on operatic solos, and who to impress more their than their darling son? Years later, when Olaf had forgotten entirely what his parents looked like (which is why I cannot describe them to you), he could still recall their voices clearly. He even sounded a little like them when he read their favorite poems aloud to us as for vocal exercises, like thundering percussion when playing Milton’s Satan, like sylvan flutes when comparing loved ones to summer days.

Olaf first left his home in the waning days of his fourth summer when his parents decided to take a drive into the countryside. He delighted at his parents’ car, an Imperial Crown limousine assembled by the best automobile designers in Italy, and spent most of the car ride lying blissfully in the comfortable seats, windows down and wind blazing past him. His parents were of course kind and pleasant when talking to him, but their smiles seemed forced and their tempers shorter than usual. The count inadvertently taught his son several ways of insulting people with his hands as they worked their way out of the city.

“I hate driving in the city!” Olaf remembered him snapping after nearly running over a motorcyclist he hadn’t noticed.

The countess laid a hand on her husband’s knee. “If you want me to take a turn dear, you can pull over at any time.”

The count grumbled. “No,” he said, “I’ll drive us there, you drive us back.” There was an irritable silence at a red light and then as they turned onto a busy avenue, the count added in a whisper his son almost couldn’t hear, “Neither of us should be having to drive. That’s what the junior volunteers are for.”

“I’m sure the strike won’t last much longer,” the countess Ophelia said.

The count veered through traffic, slamming the car to the left or right as he moved around the cars he felt going too slowly. “There shouldn’t even be a strike! What part of ‘volunteer’ do those brain dead baboons not understand? I did not spend a decade apprenticing to Arthur Montgomery to have to start scrubbing toilets again just because a bunch of spoiled children want to skip paying their dues!”

Olaf had noticed that the servants had stopped coming to the house some weeks ago, but had not understood why. When he had asked his mother why she was cooking dinner (though in hindsight the amount of smoke in the kitchen suggests burning would have been the right word to use), she had just said that Monday was on vacation and they had to fend for themselves for awhile. Not used to anger, Olaf asked, “What’s a due?” only to be hushed by his mother.

His father ranted a little while longer, but soon the city gave way an immense red suspension bridge and then all was well again. The countess started to read from a book of poetry as they went, all of the poems striking Olaf as very sad or lonely, and her voice shook more and more as they worked their way north along the highway. For the first time in his life, he tried to ignore his mother’s words, staring at the nearby towns and road signs instead, and soon interrupted her entirely.

“What’s a V-Sir?” he asked.

“A what?” the count responded.

Olaf said, “The exit sign,” he said. “It said ‘V-Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.’ What’s a V-Sir?”

The count and countess exchanged a proud smile. “Someone must have vandalized the sign, sweetie,” the countess said. “It should just say, ‘sir’.”

Another hour or so passed (Olaf, being young, could not tell time well), and then the road worked its way into a forest. They drove past several campgrounds, then stopped suddenly where there was nothing of interest at all.

“Here we are,” the count said, sounding weary. He and the countess gathered up Olaf and a picnic basket, then led him into the woods following a tiny stream. Years later, Olaf would learn that they had counted exactly sixty-seven paces before turning him to the right and following an almost imperceptible path that wove among the redwood. It ended at a large clearing filled with rows of little stone pillars and gravel paths between them.

His parents guided Olaf past the nearest stones, though they pointed at a couple along the way, saying things like, “Your great uncle was laid to rest there,” or, “That’s where the mother of one of our dearest friends is.”

The furthest four pillars from the entry to the clearing sat in their own row. Each pillar was not much thicker than an arm and shorter than the count and countess, culminating in a sphere at about chest height with an eye inscribed on one side. Each pillar had two initials engraved upon it: from left to right they ran “A. S.”, “B. S”, “H. D.”, and “O. D.”

“Where are we?” Olaf asked, and both of his parents gave different answers.

“A graveyard,” said his mother directly.

“Somewhere uninteresting,” said his father in code.

Olaf stared at his parents for some time, looking back and forth, waiting for the argument that seemed like it should break out from two such apparently contradictory answers. Neither corrected the other, so he just nodded and asked, “Are these people family too?”

“Distantly, yes,” his mother said. She was staring at the pillars now, and tears had formed in her eyes. Her husband squeezed her hand tightly, leaning against her lightly. They stood in silence for a time, then the countess arranged the picnic blanket in front of A’s grave and began to read from her poetry book again.

At four and a half, Olaf’s ability to sit still and listen to poetry without at least being able to watch the countryside pass by was quite exhausted. He squirmed and fidgeted at the bird-themed poem his mother had chosen until his father interrupted her.

“Perhaps,” the count suggested, his voice uncharacteristically scratchy, “Olaf might need to let out some energy.”

His mother wiped at her eyes, nodding. “Here,” she said, trying to sound cheery while digging about in the picnic basket. “There are all sorts of secrets hidden here, sweetie.” The countess pulled out a magnifying glass from the basket. “Why don’t you go be a little chevalier for your mama and find them?”

“What’s a cheffalier?” Olaf asked, and his parents couldn’t but smile.

“Chevalier. It’s a knight,” the count said, “but your mother is being silly, because that’s not what she means. She means detective, like Sherlock Holmes.”

Olaf was understandably confused, and asked why she hadn’t said that, but his parents said they’d explain at home and went back to their poetry reading. Left to his own devices, Olaf searched through the graves, seeking the secrets his mother had promised. Ironically, the most obvious of them was most obscured: Olaf was not tall enough to notice the way each eye insignia was comprised of three letters. He found three graves where the initials on the main body were in fact comprised of many tiny letters squeezed together so tightly as to seem whole, but two of the hidden messages were just more poems and the third was some sort of jargon-filled scientific treatise, none caught his interest. Two pillars had little keyholes on their sides, and another had regular cuts in it like marks on a ruler. All of these secrets too obtuse for a four year old, he turned from the artificial to the natural.

Many trees had green or brown mosses growing on them, and the patterns in their bark under a magnifying glass were a new and mildly interesting sight for Olaf. He studied flowers and rocks, then the palm and back of his hands, enjoying the pattern of light the magnifying lens’s focus and the warm sensation it brought.

Then Olaf came on the most fascinating sight of all: a trail of ants marching back and forth between their hive and a discarded apple core on the gravel ringing the clearing. He bent down alongside the trail, first leaning down to carefully study an ant. Olaf was fascinated by the hair-like setae the black insects possessed and their funny little mandibles. Thinking the ant he studied might enjoy a little extra warmth, Olaf sat up straight to let the sun shine clearly through the lens. Naturally, the ant became quite agitated, rushing to get out of the heat, but Olaf accepted the challenge with aplomb. His hand followed the ant, a smile forming on the young boy’s face as he anticipated the creature’s movements.

Then the ant burst into flames. Olaf let out a surprised gasp as its legs spasmed and then curled in death. The fire consumed its prey, then burned out on the gravel. Olaf stared for a long time, then found another ant to focus on. One by one, the ants on the trail were combusted, but still the hive kept coming, fresh victims following in their predecessors’ footsteps.

“They leave trails wherever they walk.”

Olaf looked up. A dark-haired man in an unseasonably warm brown overcoat stood on the far side of the gravel trail. An adult might not have seen his face or his over-plucked eyebrows, so tiny and separate as to make the young boy uncomfortably aware of his own unibrow. The man had whispered to Olaf, and continued to do so.

“That’s why they keep coming. They’re not very smart, they just follow the path in front of them. Watch that one without burning it.”

Olaf followed the man’s directions, watching one ant amble down the trail and then suddenly veer of course, moving in the same zigzag that a recently-burned ant had followed. It ended up standing before its fallen friend, trail extinguished, and awkwardly backtracked a bit and looked for a different trail forward. Olaf focused the magnifying glass upon it as it set out again and it died too.

The strange man smiled down at Olaf. The boy was used to feeling small around adults, but the man seemed taller than any he had seen before. “You’re a very smart boy,” he said, “so do remember not to blindly follow the path others leave out for you. You might get hurt.” He tapped a finger just to the side of his left eye, then bent down and tapped it again on the inside of his left ankle.

Young Olaf did not know what to make of the stranger, but his indecision was interrupted by his father shouting for him from across the clearing. “Olaf! Come eat your sandwiches!” The boy stood back up and hurried over to the picnic, magnifying glass in tow.

“Did you have fun looking for clues?” his mother asked.

Olaf nodded, and excitedly began to tell them everything he had found. When he got to the ants, his parents turned very pale.

“Olaf,” his father said sternly. “You must not go starting fires, and you certainly shouldn’t be burning innocent creatures.” He was so upset by his son’s behavior that he began undoing his belt. The count had never struck Olaf before (the boy had been mild and well-behaved), but Olaf knew enough of stories to know what the action portended.

“The man in the trees didn’t think I was doing anything wrong!” Olaf protested.

His parents froze, and then the count, slowly rebuckling his belt, asked, “What man in the trees? What did he look like?”

“He was tall,” Olaf said, “and he was wearing a big brown coat.”

“Did he have a scar?” the countess asked, leaning down and staring intently into her son’s eyes. “One that cut over his left eye like this?” She traced a diagonal line over her face. Olaf shook his head and his mother sighed and started to laugh. “Oh thank goodness,” she whispered.

The count put a hand on his wife’s shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. “Don’t let our visit make you paranoid, O,” he said. “Duke Gorgon has been in prison for months and he’ll stay there for years.” He looked around the clearing after he spoke, justifiably alert with the knowledge that some other stranger had been nearby. “Was there anything else about the man you can tell us, Olaf? Anything unusual about him?”

Olaf nodded. “His eyebrows were weird,” he said. “Like he forgot to stop plucking them.”

Without a word, his parents threw everything into the picnic basket, not even caring to wrap the sandwiches back up. Then, the countess carrying the basket and the count carrying Olaf, they set out back through the woods in a rush. Olaf saw nothing of their sprint, his father having pressed his face against him, but he felt when his parents doubled their speed. When they got to the car, the count whacked Olaf’s head against the rim of the door as he collapsed into the back with his son. Olaf was too stunned by the sight of his mother lunging over the hood of the limo to even cry out. She buckled herself in while her husband buckled in Olaf and started driving the second her son was secure. The count’s hands shook as he fought with his own seat belt.

“I told you!” the countess said, not turning back to him. “I told you it wasn’t safe!”

“He’s not even supposed to be back in the area! Alice said he was last sighted in Omaha rob-” The count realized his volume and lowered his voice, then placed his hands over his son’s ears. Olaf heard nothing until they were back on the bridge, but by then his parents were discussing poetry again. They would tell him nothing about the man except to promise he would not be able to get into the house. When they reached their alleged haven, Olaf was shooed to his room. He watched from his window as his mother circled the house, aware of his father having a long conversation on the telephone downstairs but unable to make out any of the words. Within half an hour, a group of five men and women Olaf had never seen before arrived at the front door. Most were led around to the back where Olaf could not see, but one remained out front, pretending to be entranced by the flowers lining the walk while repeatedly checking the gun at his belt.

Just as Olaf was about to try and distract himself with a book, a peg-legged man appeared at the end of the drive. He approached the other man out front and they spoke together for a time, exchanging an envelope. The armed man went to the door, hidden from Olaf’s perspective though he could hear the knock at the door. He also heard the door open and close half a minute later, then the armed man returned to the front garden, the envelope gone.

Olaf next heard his mother angrily hissing as she and his father went up the stairs to the tower. “-a coincidence?! Paying respects to his fallen family?!”

“I don’t believe it either, Ophel-” The count was cut off as they stepped out of earshot.

Volunteering in his blood, Olaf found himself slowly pushing his door open. He looked out on the hall, saw no one, and crept to the stairs. Standing on the tips of his toes, Olaf followed the stairs of the tower up to the last bend. He peered around it, delighted to see the door just barely ajar, and leaned forward to listen.

“Why us?” the count asked. His voice sounded as scratchy as it had at the graves. “Why Olaf?”

Olaf’s mother answered, “He must want to apprentice the boy, like in the old days before the schools.” She sounded cool here, without the slightest hint of any emotion except contempt for the man they spoke of.

“Then what do we do?”

The reply was made without hesitation. “We can’t let them take him. We can’t let him become a member.”

“Ophelia…”

“I won’t argue about this,” the countess said. “The one time we take him outside the city, a trip that only two people outside this family knew about, and Snicket shows up?”

The count said, “We have a good list of suspects then. We can figure out who is working with him and-”

“It’s more than one accomplice!” the countess retorted. “Solitude may be the seventh worst mentor by rank, but that’s no reason to doubt her when she said the duke wasn’t alone.”

“Frank and Ernest were quite clear-”

“Quite clear that not twelve hours before their report was collected, they had been living in their home happily with their parents, about to have their fifth birthday party?”

The count and countess were quiet for a long time after that, whispering too softly for Olaf to overhear. He did not dare get any closer, lest his parents open the door and see him, but he was too confused about the events of the day to walk away.

Finally, he heard his father say, “Very well. We won’t let them take him, not until it’s safe.”

“Good,” the countess said. “I’ll go check on Olaf. He must be fam-”

Olaf sneaked back down the stairs on hearing his name, and had just enough time to climb back onto his bed when his mother entered his bedroom.

“Olaf? I’m sorry this day has been so strange. Are you hungry, dear? Let’s have whatever you’d like.”

Olaf frowned, already too old to be so easily distracted. “Why does the man outside have a gun?” he asked.

The countess just shook her head, taking Olaf by the hand and starting to walk him to the hall. “He’s just a funny friend of your father’s,” she said. “You won’t be seeing him again. Now come on, it’s time for dinner,” and she led him down to the den to watch television until food was ready. Neither she nor the count entertained any discussion of the strange man or the other guests, and true to the countess’s word the next day the yard was empty. Life went on much the way it always had, though the count and countess were away far less often and hosted no further parties.

Olaf knew things were different though. Each day he went to the kitchen, where a calendar hung low enough for him to peek ahead, and watched as the red X’s drew closer and closer to his upcoming birthday.

* * *

Kennedy’s attempt at a dramatic pause was slightly deflated when Beatrice excused herself to go to the bathroom. When the young woman returned, still rubbing sanitizer between her fingers, she asked, “Why didn’t the count mention Dewey?”

“Hmm?” Kennedy asked.

“The count said Frank and Ernest made testimony, but he didn’t mention Dewey. And I know that Count Olaf won’t know Dewey was real until almost the end. But why wouldn’t the count have mentioned him, or just said ‘the triplets’ testimony’?”

Kennedy said, “I don’t know, not really. And it certainly isn’t as if Olaf would ever find out, like you said. I suspect that Frank and Ernest were separated from their brother, because most new volunteers weren’t taken straight to the valley, and because Solitude – who your uncle points out would only plummet further in the rankings of mentors – doesn’t seem the type to quote Edith Wharton. It may have been an accomplice of the duke, as the countess theorized was present, but that only raises further questions about Frank and Ernest’s insistence that he acted alone.”

“Why did they insist that?” Beatrice asked. “What did they see?”

Kennedy’s initial answer was a shrug. “Olaf never looked into the matter, so I can’t tell you. But the Denouement Debacle, as it was called in those early days before VFD understood it had undergone a schism, ended up being an echoed several times throughout Olaf’s career. Once you understand them, you will be able to make some better suppositions into what happened with them. As for any unmentioned details of Dewey’s life, which is too tangential to Olaf’s to be expanded upon anywhere else in this story, he likely remained in the valley for much of his childhood, barring supervised missions. He may or may not have been able to see his brothers, but I suspect they remained in contact. Shortly after they came to majority, Frank and Ernest took out a loan and began building the Hotel Denouement, and no doubt their brother was with them, winding the clock and waiting for the moment the three of them could reveal the crimes of the fire-starters to the general public.”

“The three of them? But wasn’t Ernest a fire-starter?”

Kennedy chuckled. “Technically, he never started any fires at all. But as Ernest and Olaf would meet quite a few times, let’s save his story for a more appropriate occasion. For now, Olaf’s fifth birthday.”


	5. 1.4 - I sunned it with smiles, and with soft deceitful wiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Count Olaf goes to the bank.

_Sukkot I 5756_

A volunteer once wrote a poem that said that Mulctuary Money Management sat directly on a fault line of the schism. The city’s second-tallest building (only outdone by 667 Dark Avenue) cast a shadow over it every morning, a monument to the ever-rising tide of victories of modernism over culture, of corporate suits over bohemians, of profiting off of human suffering over giving freely to the common good. The intersection that separated the buildings fought the good fight all the same, the names Montgomery and Clay respectively a memory of the noble family that had fostered so many great talents in a home that could withstand every disaster but a modern pharaoh’s aspiration, and a threatening reference to the mythical creation of man: a promise that the pyramid above would one day crumble to the dust from whence it came. The poet went on to claim that the streets represented fertile earth and that the shoots and sprouts of VFD’s nobler side would rise up out of the ashes their enemies left behind. Her enemies, after killing her, argued instead that the buildings above represented their boots grinding volunteers into the dirt forever.

Either way, the bank sat between the two sides and served each in equal measure. Its primary currencies were the dollar and the orphan, which by the nineties the bank staff saw as nearly interchangeable. Each were taken in by the bank, invested into risky ventures around the world to accumulate interest, and inevitably lost en masse in under a decade, only recovered with help from government officials, if at all. An entire wing of the bank was dedicated to Orphan Affairs, which drew in the most of both of the bank’s favored tenders. Nonetheless, Olaf had learned from Arthur Poe’s secretary that the case of the Baudelaire orphans was already the most complicated of the decade at least and that they still hadn’t been assigned a home as a result.

“Mr. Poe will be so happy to have someone to work this out with!” the man on the other end of the line had promised. “I’ll schedule you for the first appointment of the day!”

Count Olaf found Poe rather enthusiastic. The banker, a man in a crisp suit and shiny black shoes, shook Olaf’s hand nearly as firmly as he coughed into a handkerchief with his other hand. “Such a pleasure to meet a count!” the man had said, his tone over-affected.

“The honor is all yours,” Olaf assured him, stepping out of the hall and into the windowless office. “Shall we get to business?”

Mr. Poe coughed again, then nodded. “Yes, let’s! This whole affair is so strange, even for a keen bureaucrat like myself.” He went over to one of the many shiny file cabinets that lined his office, produced an overstuffed manila folder, and deposited it at the center of his desk. “May I ask how you heard of their case?”

“I’m…” Olaf hesitated, not remembering off of the top of his head and aware that pulling out a map of the city would look rather odd. “A third cousin four times removed, I think. Or perhaps the other way around? It’s a bit difficult to keep track of.”

“That’s a rather distant relation,” Mr. Poe said with a frown. “I don’t think I know any of my third cousins.”

Olaf said smoothly, “Perhaps you don’t have any?” and the banker paused to cough and consider the notion. He seemed to accept the idea, nodding wordlessly, and then flipped open the folder and held up a long sheet of fan-fold paper.

“This is my reference copy of the Baudelaire will,” Mr. Poe explained. “Most of it is rather straightforward by virtue of the fact that everything they left to anyone who wasn’t one of their children was destroyed in the fire and cannot be bequeathed.”

“And what did they leave to their children?” Olaf asked, wondering if perhaps the bowl he’d seen at the mansion had been a decoy and the real article had been stored in a bank vault for safekeeping.

Mr. Poe coughed into his handkerchief before answering. “They left the entirety of their fortune – all cash kept here – in a trust to Violet, their eldest, though there are a few stipulations. Mostly to ensure that Klaus and Sunny are seen to as well, though to be honest I doubt such protections are strictly necessary. All three of the children get along quite well. I rather hope some of their attitude rubs off on my own boys; they’re almost always fighting.”

Count Olaf nodded, only half-listening past “all cash”. He wanted to ask immediately if the children had any part of a tea set in their collection, but didn’t want to do anything suspicious. Arthur Poe was a fool, but even a blind man can be observant. Poe rambled on for some time about his children and wife, plus his sister Eleanora, before finally returning to the matter at hand.

“It is the question of family which vexes our execution of the Baudelaire will,” Mr. Poe explained. “This version of the will, finalized only last year, states: ‘In the event of our deaths before Violet reaches majority, we entrust Mulctuary Money Management to place them in the care of the most convenient guardian possible: Jacques Snicket of 667 Dark Avenue. As a beloved family member, and a resident of our fair city, Jacques will be able to raise our children in comfort and has promised minimal disruption to their ongoing education and social lives.’”

Count Olaf felt a broad grin spread across his face as Poe told him several things he already knew. “ Unfortunately, Jacques is no longer a residen t at that address – or any other in the city that I can find. I asked my sister to look into the matter for me, and it turns out he was a former employee of hers but not a very good one. He was a paranoid recluse, always looking over his shoulder and running stories about how perfectly accidental fires like the one at the Royal Gardens last month were part of some insidious cabal’s plan to steal all of his money, or something to that effect anyway.  I hardly think he would be a suitable guardian, under the circumstances.

“As the will was so new and the Baudelaires had in fact scheduled an appointment to make further changes, I took the liberty of checking their prior will, but that wasn’t much help either. They were insistent on family and put forth Elwyn Snicket as their intended guardian instead, but he has passed away as well.”

“Our family has known plenty of misfortune,” Olaf said, which sounded sympathetic enough to be polite while not actually commenting on the situation at all.

Mr. Poe nodded vigorously. “It seems so! With Jacques unavailable, I am hoping to fulfill the spirit of their will if not the exact letter. Unfortunately even that has proven to be something of a production. The Baudelaires proper have very little history in the city that I can find, though the  _ Punctilio _ archives were cleared out a few years ago to make way for tapes  of British television , and beyond an announcement to Beatrice’s parents marrying, there’s nothing.”

He pulled out a cutting of newspaper, yellow content on yellow page: “CITY’S THIRD-MOST IMPORTANT FINANCIAL ADVISOR PROPOSES TO WEALTHIEST WOMAN IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE.” Count Olaf kept his face steady to avoid betraying his knowledge that the headline was inaccurate. Mr. Poe coughed and said, “It must have been a slow news day to make the front page, and it’s no help at all in locating any surviving Baudelaires. There may not even be any.” His finger pointed to a part of the body of the article, which reported the names of both bride- and groom-to-be as “Baudelaire” already. This was also wrong on Fernald’s part, but Olaf saw no reason to let Mr. Poe know that. “I suppose they must have been cousins,” Arthur reasoned, “and only children besides.”

“No,” Olaf said, “they were adults when they were wed.”

The banker said, “No, I meant they didn’t have sib-” then coughed so violently into his handkerchief that a hole formed in it. The banker sighed, threw the monogrammed cloth into a metal net waste bin by his desk, and drew a replacement from a drawer. “Where was I?” he asked. “Oh yes. There was a book published about the Baudelaire family history, but shortly after Jacquelyn died it seems Fernald tracked down all of the copies and kept them in the family library. Unless Beatrice gave any away, they were all destroyed in the fire.” Mr. Poe chuckled. “What a strange set of events,” he said.

Count Olaf nodded. “I am not much of an expert on genealogy,” he lied, “but I can help you do research into Bertrand’s – and my – family.”

Mr. Poe shook his head. “I’ve already got a bit of a head start,” he said. “ But it has, like everything else, devolved into something of a morass.” He pulled out a torn illustration of a tree, its various branches labeled with initials in alphabetical order. “The Snickets are as secretive about their heritage as the Baudelaires, it seems,  and this was all I could find .” He started by focusing on the letter ‘A’. “Now, Bertrand was the son of Avis Snicket, at least so far as anyone can tell. No one knew he was alive until his cousins found him while investigating their aunt’s estate. She and her brother, also named Bertrand, had perished at a birthday party. Avis clearly had the family paranoia, because there wasn’t even a reference to her son’s name in the house, let alone anything to identify his father.” Mr. Poe frowned at the very bottom of the page, where the tear was. “All of this I had to gather from what newspapers could be found; the author of this document certainly didn’t care for accuracy. He lost track of Avis entirely and his remark on the elder Bertrand’s whereabouts were in rather bad taste.”

Count Olaf laughed, and when Mr. Poe raised an eyebrow hurriedly pointed at the O at the far end of the tree. “They also must not have liked Ol- O very much,” he said. “They drew a noose.”

Mr. Poe looked down at the tree. “Oh dear,” he remarked, “I suppose they did. How maudlin.” He forced a smile back onto his face, and continued. “As I said, the elder Bertrand had two children of his own: Elwyn and  Cecilia .  Both are deceased, having inherited  not only their mother’s enormous fortune but also her poor health.”

“And enemies,” Olaf whispered while Mr. Poe coughed.

“ As I’d like to keep the children with blood relatives, I’m left w ith the third branch of the family. Charles Snicket seems to have perished in World War II, but he had three triplet daughters: Deborah, Esther, and Fiona, all deceased now. Esther is Jacques’s mother, and I’m sorry to say her other children were cut from the same cloth. Kit was photographed kidnapping  that missing Verhoogan child and… Larry (I believe that was his name) was an arsonist who no one has heard from in some time.”

Olaf gasped theatrically. “My, my, my…” he said. “I suppose all families must have their black sheep, or perhaps even flocks.”

Mr. Poe nodded sadly. “My own father was something of a disappointment,” he said, “and I suspected him for some time of being involved in  narcotics or something worse. But as you can see, I still turned out to be a respectable member of the community. I hope to provide the Baudelaires the same opportunity, no matter how… eccentric… their ancestors seem to be.”

“Of course,” Olaf said. “Nothing could be more important than helping a child reach their full potential.” He looked down at the family tree – a pale imitation of his own coded map. “What about Deborah and Fiona?” he asked.

“ All of Deborah’s children are dead, as are Fiona’s daughters ,” Mr. Poe said incorrectly, “and while Miranda had a family, I cannot reach either of her former husbands and her adult son Fernald is a wanted criminal as well. I would be a failure of an executor if I permitted him to have free access to three innocent children, so that’s a dead end. Napoleon Caliban is an architect in New Orleans, but as the Baudelaires wanted their children to remain in the city, I haven’t attempted to reach out to him.”  Count Olaf felt himself fight off another smile as Mr. Poe inadvertently passed him information on the whereabouts of a noble volunteer.

“ Now, since you said you might be able to help me, is there any additional information you can add to this family tree?” Mr. Poe asked. There was of course a good deal, but Olaf was hardly going to explain his research to the idiotic banker.

“I’m afraid not,” Olaf said. “I have a cousin in the city, but he’s from the wrong end of the family. To my knowledge, any other relatives of the Baudelaires live far away at best.”

“Damn!” said Mr. Poe. “As all of the archives have gone up in smoke, tracing the family history even further back will  take me some time.” He frowned. “It’s rather unfortunate; my house is rather crowded with three extra children. I worry about their development, being caught up in limbo as they are.”

Count Olaf leaned forward with a n ominous smile. “Why Mr. Poe, it seems to me that there’s an easy solution to all of these problems that will let the Baudelaire will be executed as close to faithfully as possible.  As I am a relative of the Baudelaires and I live in the city,  wouldn’t it be for the best if I took them in?”

C oughing, Mr. Poe said, “I suppose if you are a relative and of better stock than all of the candidates seen so far, something could be arranged…” He leaned forward too, smiling placidly. “Can you prove your relation to the Baudelaires?” he asked. “Not that I doubt you, of course, but what kind of bank would we be if we simply let anyone walk off the street and withdraw our orphans?”

Count Olaf nodded. “I’ll need a day to get the papers in order,” he said,  prompting Mr. Poe to start rummaging in a drawer . “ But I can  drop them off  first thing . W hile I’m here  though ,  it couldn’t hurt to go over a few details. Knowing how much of a stipend-”

The phone on Mr. Poe’s desk rang and he picked it up, listened for five seconds, and then rattled off a series of numbers like an auctioneer on fast forward. When he finished, he covered the phone’s mouth piece with his handkerchief and said, “I’ m afraid this is a very important call. If you can get all the paperwork in by lunch tomorrow, I can probably drop off the Baudelaires Friday morning. Perhaps we can discuss a ll the little details then?”

Count Olaf frowned, but agreed. It didn’t make sense to worry too much about the money when he’d be seeing it soon enough,  and quite possibly the sugar bowl as well once the orphans moved in. He went home, dug some papers out of the remains of the family library, and submitted it all to Mr. Poe’s secretary,  who reminded him he might want to childproof the house, what with Sunny’s being an infant, and provide some toys for the orphans as a group to help acclimate them to the change .  Olaf assured the secretary he would do just that – but of course it was us who ended up doing the work.

* * *

Kennedy paused to stretch, giving Beatrice a moment to think. “It was unfortunate for everyone,” she said, “that Mr. Poe’s phone call came in when it did. If Olaf had known that he couldn’t just withdraw the fortune bit by bit with charges and expenses, would he have even bothered?”

“Maybe not,” Kennedy conceded, twisting her torso left and right. Beatrice could hear a few cricks and pops as the woman moved. “But you’ve used the wrong word there. ‘Unfortunate’ implies an element of luck, and it wasn’t luck at all. Mr. Poe’s phone rang when it did because he had a little button in his desk drawer that prompted the phone to ring, and he pressed it because he had been given strict instructions not to discuss those sorts of details with Olaf once he was there.”

Beatrice’s mouth hung open for some time before she recovered. “So Poe was a volunteer?” she asked.

“No, not in the slightest. But volunteers and villains alike knew Mr. Poe quite well, and the smartest among each side had trained him well. He saw most of his business meetings as a silly sort of game, his unusual instructions as nothing more than the pranks and japes of colleagues using him as intermediary. In this way, Mr. Poe furthered the agenda of many members of the society without ever being inducted into it himself, nor behaving in such a way as to incur the wrath of its members, because everyone knew that he was a cat’s paw without any real loyalties or agendas.”

Beatrice nodded, but said, “I guess I still don’t understand why they’d give Mr. Poe such an instruction. Or how they’d even know to expect Olaf’s trying to adopt the Baudelaires.”

“Would it help if I told you that the high court had an impromptu hearing Saturday evening where they made several rulings greatly changing the way trust funds were to be handled within the city?”

“No,” Beatrice said. “It wouldn’t. Why would Olaf’s associates make it harder for him to steal the Baudelaire fortune?”

Kennedy just smiled and continued her story.


	6. 1.5 - Riches that vex and vanities that tire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hide and seek.

_9 Tishrei 5724, a year of the rabbit_

Olaf had a nightmare to start his birthday. His parents took him on another drive, this time far, far away from the city and the green hills. They took him out to a monochrome desert, for the young boy was most familiar with the setting from television, and in the gray and sandy wastes left him behind.

“We’ll be right,” the nightmare version of his parents promised. “We’ve just forgotten the picnic basket.”

Then they were gone, leaving the young boy in the desert. Olaf tried to wait patiently, but of course this was not what dreams are for. A hand rested on his shoulder, and when Olaf turned he saw the man with the thin eyebrows.

The man smiled down at him. “It’s time for your examination, Olaf,” he said. The man pulled a magnifying glass out of his pocket, holding it up to his eye. “There are so many deformities we can correct.” He leaned down close to Olaf, focusing the glass on the young boy’s unibrow.

Olaf started sweating and stepped back, but the man followed him. “Your parents left you here with me,” he assured the boy. “It’s clearly what they wanted. There’s so much I could teach you…” Olaf’s forehead ignited. The boy tried to press the fire out with his hand, but it only caught too. The man only laughed. “Don’t you remember what to do?” he asked as the young boy screamed. “It’s so very simple…”

Naturally, Olaf woke up screaming. He rushed to his closet, where a mirror was kept on the inside of the door, and inspected himself closely. There was nothing different about him, of course. It had only been a dream – and it was not even a recurring one. Olaf never had the dream again, though over the long years of his life, he never quite forgot it.

The sun having just begun to rise, Olaf found it difficult to return to sleep. He tossed and turned for some time until his parents came to rouse him. They sang a little birthday ditty and carried him down to the kitchen, where his father began making pancakes for breakfast. “You should have as many cakes as possible on a birthday!” he said with a grin as he put a little plate before Olaf.

“What are these?” Olaf asked, dubious of the unfamiliar red berries that had been put atop the stack.

Olaf’s mother smiled and plucked one from Olaf’s plate as he reached for the maple syrup. “They’re raspberries,” she said, popping one into her mouth with a smile. “They’re my favorite! I thought they’d make a good birthday treat. They’re better than candy!”

The five year old boy tried one too before he poured syrup onto the pancakes. His mother had made such claims of fruits and berries before – California engendering the sort of denial-based gluttony that C. S. Lewis wrote about in most of its inhabitants – but as the berry burst, tart and sweet juice soaking Olaf’s tongue, he thought she might be right. Syrup and pancakes were completely forgotten as Olaf grabbed the remaining berries and scarfed them down. The count and countess only laughed.

“I’d best get him a bowl,” the count said, searching through the cupboards for a small one to pour berries into. “Or perhaps go to the store and get the pair of you a trough,” he teased, finding one and moving to the fridge.

His wife continued to giggle. “I don’t know why you’re surprised, dear. I told you outright I was only marrying you for your fortune so I could buy all the raspberries on Earth.” She turned to her son. “I hope you can forgive me for making you wait five whole years to try any, dear,” she said. “I bought some for you before, once or twice, but I’m afraid each time I ate them all before I remembered to share. They’re something of an addiction.” Sure enough, she ate almost as many raspberries as Olaf did when the bowl was put before them – it helped that he had to ask what addiction was, and that the count supplied the evasive, generic answer appropriate for a young boy, leaving her to eat uninterrupted.

The morning continued on happily. Everyone ate their fill of pancakes and all the raspberries in the house, they spent some time up in the tower reading poetry books. His mother picked out all of Olaf’s favorite surreal poems to enjoy. After some time of this, Olaf asked if they might go outside and play in the garden. This made his parents stop smiling.

“It’s not a good day for it,” the count said, even though the sun was clearly shining through the window. The young boy, remembering his parent’s secret conversation, felt his lip start trembling, and the count immediately bent down to put a hand on the young boy’s shoulder. “Hey now!” he said. “We can still have fun.” He looked to the countess with a wink. “Let’s play hide-and-seek,” he said.

Olaf bit his lip, considering. His mother quickly added, “We’ll make your father ‘it’ first,” she said. “And I’ll show you some of our best hiding spots.”

Intrigued at the promise of more new experiences, Olaf nodded. “Let’s go!” he said, hurrying to the stairwell door. “Count to a hundred!” he told his dad, and the man nodded and covered his eyes with his hands. Together, mother and son hurried down the stairwell. They kept giggling and shushing each other all the way down to the gold guest bedroom. Wallpaper covered the top two-thirds of the walls in this room, with intricate black-inked eyes painted in regular patterns along them. Wooden paneling ran along the bottoms of the walls, and the countess hurried to one of the panels. She tugged and twisted, and the whole thing came loose. She gestured for Olaf to look within, smiling broadly.

The boy gasped as he bent down to step through the new hole in the wall. An entire secret corridor, as long as the two bedrooms it sat between, stood before him. A comfortable chair had been stuffed into the far end, cramped against the two walls. A pair of holes sat in the wall looking into the other bedroom (Olaf’s own), but Olaf was not tall enough to look through them. He looked to his mother as she crawled through, eyes wide and shining.

“This has been here the whole time?” he asked.

His mother nodded, reaching through the hole to grab the wooden panel and pull it back into place. She smiled at her son and slid past him to the chair. She lifted two thin picture books from its cushion, sat down, and gestured for him to get into her lap. The boy did so gladly, and spent some time looking at the fantastic images with his mother in silence. They listened to the count going up and down the stairs, shouting as he pulled aside curtains or peered under furniture.

His tone became more concerned as he ran out of rooms to search. “Olaf? Ophelia?!” he called from the ground floor. “You’re not in the basement, are you?”

Olaf let out a little gasp. “We have a basement?” he whispered. The countess shushed him, but Olaf doubted he could be heard. A strange grinding noise was coming from downstairs. “I want to see the basement!” he said.

His mother shook her head. “No, darling,” she said. “That’s not-”

“Please?” Olaf asked. “It’s my birthday! Once daddy finds us?”

The countess sighed. “All right,” she whispered. “We can go down there, but just for a little while. Understand? And you have to be quiet from now on when we’re hiding. Okay?” Olaf nodded to show he was cooperative, and they waited. The grinding stopped, but so had all sounds of Olaf’s father. It felt like they waited forever, though Olaf said as an adult it must have only been a few minutes before the grinding started up again.

When it was gone, the count called from the upper floor, “I’m going to find you!” He stepped first into the blue bedroom, and Olaf heard his father banging at the wall somehow. “Are you here?” he heard his father ask an empty space. The man grumbled slightly at his bad guess, and came at last to the gold room. “I bet you’re here!” he said, which made Olaf wonder if there were a third hidden room among the other bedrooms or more. The wooden panel fell away and the count’s clean-shaven face stuck through the hole.

The countess stuck out her tongue. “That took you far too long, dear,” she said.

Chuckling, the count said, “I thought we’d work up to the hard-to-find places, my sweet,” he said. “It makes the rest of the game seem rather boring if the best spots are used up right away.”

The countess nodded. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “Young Olaf here heard you going into the basement, and now he wants a look around.”

“Maybe another day,” the count said with a frown, but the countess shook her head.

“He can take a quick look around,” she said in a whisper, holding Olaf tightly against her as she stood. “It is his birthday.”

The count still didn’t seem to approve, but he crawled back out and the countess put Olaf down to let him shimmy through. Once she followed, the three of them went hand in hand down to the kitchen, leaving the wooden panel leaning against its twins. The countess opened the pantry door, pulled at a hook, and smiled. Olaf just gasped.

The rumbling and grinding he had heard before was much louder up close. The stone floor of the pantry lowered, slowly forming a staircase that descended into the depths of the house. There was no lighting beyond the pantry’s hanging light bulb, but neither count nor countess seemed concerned as they led the way. At the very bottom of the steps was a heavy metal door with an ornate, golden handle. The count pushed it open, revealing only darkness. He stepped past the threshold, Olaf hearing him count his paces as he went. He reset his count at twelve, and when he reached six again from there, a light clicked on. At first all Olaf saw was a wall, but as he and his mother stepped through he was given a full view of the secret floor below the manor.

The basement was (unsurprisingly to us, but a shock to young Olaf) as large as the floors below. The pantry being one of the corners of the house, everything was in clear view from the bottom of the stairs below it, lit by ornate lamps hanging from the ceiling. Several stone pillars divided the room into several sections, placed strategically to hold the weight of the house above. The area in front of the entry was empty, though paintings of nude women (Olaf would later learn they were reproductions of works by painters such as Ingres and Botticelli) decorated the gray stone walls. In the nearest corner were several additional bookshelves, filled with old-looking books. Beyond them were three large desks, covered with paperwork and a few more books, and beyond them a long table covered in glass jars filled with unfamiliar fluids, stretching all the way to the furthest corner of the room. In the last corner, a plastic sheet had been laid out so that someone could fling paint about, creating odd abstract works in the style of a fallen volunteer and friend.

Any of these sights might have distracted Olaf for hours, but he had one preferred focus. At the middle of the far wall, stone gave way to bricks. It was clear to Olaf that they were covering an archway of some sort. He pointed at them. “How do you open that door?” he asked.

His mother frowned. “That’s not a door, Olaf,” she said, but it was obvious she was lying by the way she didn’t bother with a pet name. “The wall just got damaged a few years back. We had to fix it.”

“But why not replace it with stone then?” Olaf asked. “You have the money.”

His parents had no answer. The count gave the countess a pointed look. “Well,” she said, staring warily at the bricked-up door, “we showed it to you. Come, Olaf. Back upstairs. Let’s watch some TV before lunch.”

“What kind of room is on the other side?” he asked. “Is it just another reading nook?”

The count guffawed. “There’s nothing there, Olaf,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

Olaf almost asked, “If there’s nothing there, why do you keep looking back at it?” but held his tongue. They went upstairs, watched TV, and had lunch. They played hide and seek some more, Olaf finding a third hidden nook in his parents’ bedroom closet when he tried to hide there. As it sat adjacent to the master bath, it was nearly as large as a room itself, the chairs in the room fitting easily. Olaf made himself comfortable and when the count and countess found him, they were carrying dinner, cake, and many books.

“Let’s spend the rest of the day in here,” the count said, “like we’re all hiding!”

Olaf wasn’t sure how that was supposed to work if there weren’t any seekers, but cake was cake – and dinner a thick soup with chunks of beef. The boy ate his dinner gladly, then looked at the cake with delight.

“We can’t properly sing, ‘Happy Birthday’,” the countess whispered, “because we’re hiding. But happy birthday, little Olaf.”

She hugged her son and his father messed up his hair, then started to cut the cake. Olaf watched the white-frosted cake get sliced with such anticipation he almost didn’t notice the creak of the stairs. His mother quickly placed a hand over his mouth, shaking her head when he turned up to her. There was another creaking sound, then footsteps. They went up the corridor and back, then up the tower steps and back again. Then the house was silent and still.

Olaf looked from his mother to his father with wide, demanding eyes, but neither would say anything. The countess eventually let the boy go, her hand resting in her lap. She looked down. “What are we supposed to do?” she asked her husband. “They know when we leave, they can get in when we’re here-”

“Not in front of-”

“He’s not stupid!” the countess said. She looked down at her son, tears in her eyes, then back at her husband. “And neither are they. They’ll find these hiding spots eventually. We aren’t safe here!”

The count sighed. “I know,” he said. He took a deep breath. “I’ve been speaking to a realtor. There are some lovely homes for sale in small villages. I’ve made an offer for one on the coast.” He smiled at Olaf. “Would you like that as a belated birthday present?” he asked. “A late one, I mean,” he added, knowing his son wouldn’t know the word. “A whole new home?”

Olaf frowned, looking around at the secret room he had only just learned about. “I like it here!” he said.

“I do too,” the count said, “and in a few years, we’ll move back. Think of it as a long seaside vacation. You’ll have a great time and make so many friends.”

“And we can teach you to swim, and then go diving! Think of how exciting it will be to explore under the water! It’s a whole other world down there!”

Olaf asked, quiet and small: “The sea? Not the desert?”

His parents exchanged a confused glance. “Of course not the desert,” his father said. “Why on earth would we go there?”

Olaf considered explaining, but didn’t see why he should have to if his parents were going to keep so much from him. “I don’t know,” he said.

“We’ll have a good time,” his father said, “and we’ll be safe. You’ll see, and someday you’ll understand. I promise. You just have to get a bit older.”

“How much older?” Olaf asked. “Eight or nine?”

His father laughed. “Yes,” he said at last, “I think we can explain to you enough when you’re eight. Is that a deal?” He held out his hand for his son to shake. The boy took it uncertainly. “Now,” the count said, “let’s get out of this room and go out. They won’t come again.”

* * *

Beatrice interrupted. “They didn’t just burn the house down?”

“No. Why would they?” Kennedy asked. Again she took a drink, as her voice had gotten a bit scratchy from all the talking.

“They burned down the Denouement house,” Beatrice said.

Kennedy nodded. “Yes,” she said, “but why was it burned down? Surely you don’t think it was standard procedure, even after the schism, to make orphans out of every family? The organization wouldn’t survive that.”

“Would Charles have cared?”

“No, but he didn’t want Olaf dead either, did he?”

Beatrice studied her hands in her lap for some time. “Can you just explain what was happening, then?” she asked. “For an explanatory story, it seems like all you’re doing is raising questions without answers.”

“Alright,” said Kennedy. “It’s hard for me to be certain, but I suspect that what happened that night is simple: Charles Snicket had nothing to do with it. Volunteers from one side of the schism or another came to abduct Olaf, performed the signals, and received no answer. As the family had not been observed to leave the property and the underground passageway was bricked up, someone searched the house to try and find the young boy. Failing, they left, ready to try again later. The next day, when the count’s offer on a house in a little town on the coast some distance past the Vineyard of Fragrant Grapes was accepted, the countess and Olaf left right away. As such, he was not kidnapped that year.”

“Then how did he join?”

“I’m getting there,” Kennedy promised. “It all happened because of a mistake…”


End file.
